January 2008 Archives

SEOmoz is holding a search marketer's survey to get information about you. The winner can get an iPhone (or $400 to be spent at Amazon.com).

I just took the survey and the questions are quite interesting. A sampling of questions:

1. How many jobs have you held in the last 5 years?
2. What is your current position?
3. How many emails do you receive for work-related tasks in a given day?
4. How many feeds do you read?

and more.

It will be interesting to see what SEOmoz learns from the data!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

A HighRankings Forum member wants to know if it's possible to rank well for competitive keywords without having inbound links.

The answer is no. As Randy points out:

Without any links at all pointing towards your site not only will it not rank very well, but it won't even stay in the index.

Tis the way of the web. The search engines expect people to link to things those people find to be of value. So if no one ever links to your site they make the (correct) assumption that it has no value to their users.

If there's no trust (and no links to the site), there's no reason why the search engines would consider it valuable to other users.

The best scenario is to look for relevant sites, not only because Matt Cutts says so but because you can get great traffic from it:

I've noticed in my own experience that the best links are obvious. Highly relevant, quality websites. You hear it over and over, but my reasoning for calling them the "best links" is not merely for Search Engine ranking help. The reason they're so good is you can see that these referring sites send good traffic.

So in the end, links matter. Relevant links are better.

Forum discussion continues at HighRankings Forum.

Bryson Meunier posted a characteristics of the top 100 mobile search queries at AT&T. The top five keywords, in order, are "google," "yahoo," "sports," "facebook," and "myspace."

Further, Bryson says that mobile users are looking for navigational options as opposed to the traditional sit-at-your-computer search where you may not know what you're looking for.

According to the classification, the mobile queries were overwhelmingly navigational in nature, with almost three quarters of the queries coming from users who already knew what they were looking for: query intent percent of queries informational 12% navigational 73% transactional 15%

The article concludes with some best practices, including:

Using navigational queries such as branded terms, competitor terms and names of known products as core keywords could lead to increased visibility in mobile search engines.

...[U]sers are looking for usable sites, [so] developing a mobile web site and including the term "mobile" in the copy as a secondary keyword could lead to increased visibility in mobile search engines.

The research is very detailed and incredibly in-depth. If you're going along the mobile route, it's a definite read for you.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Yesterday, CNet introduced that Yahoo is going to be supporting the OpenID standard for a "universal Internet log-in." The article claims that the biggest victor is not Yahoo but OpenID.

However, on WebmasterWorld, the concept of OpenID is irksome to many.

Oh, I can see it now, people don't use hard passwords...then the hackers can get it ALL in one fell swoop. That could be a disaster for many.

Not all feel this way, though. It's good to get a centralized system for password storage:

I dont think there is much of a safety issue here, most of the mainstream public use the same userId/password across different websites now anyway!...So why not legitimize (the practice) with a central userid provider (hopefully with a strict password requirement)

In any event, it's still great that Yahoo has taken this approach. You can access the OpenID program on Yahoo at http://openid.yahoo.com/.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Our beloved Google Groups was hit with some forum spam the other day. A Google Groups thread in the Webmaster Help section reported it back on January 30th. Duncan at TechCrunch reported it a day earlier with his Go To Google Groups. Get Tricked Into Downloading Malware. Do Not Pass Go.

You can still see some of the spam posts indexed in Google, with a search on site:vivalb55.googlegroups.com. Here is a screen shot, because Google has begun to clean up some of these accounts:

As you can see, users set up multiple accounts and then did tons of posts. Then some how they did a redirection from their post to their site. It still works if you use the cache link. For example, this cache link will redirect you to this site, which is on debt consolidation. The domain is registered at GoDaddy under a private registration, but the DNS information points to ULTRADNS.NET.

The form of redirection is via JavaScript that is currently live at http://www.parkonrails.com/lead.asp?id=55.

Googler, JohnMu, thanked everyone for reporting it and said it will be taken care of. It seems like a lot of those accounts have already been removed, and that Google is still removing the spam from their index. John said:

Thanks for bringing this issue up. I've passed it on to the team. In general, if the group had normal postings, you could use the "Report this message" link (under "More Options") to report things like this. In cases like this where there are no postings to report (but where the group clearly abuses our terms of service), you can send an email to abuse @ googlegroups.com providing the information that you have.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

It is hard for me to link to just one thread with discussion on how it appears Google is paying less and less this month to their AdSense publishers. But there is one huge WebmasterWorld thread with pages and pages of posts, starting in the middle of this month and still containing a lot of steam with upset publishers.

Overall, many publishers have noticed a drop in earnings reported throughout the month by Google AdSense. There are dozens of other threads with similar complaints across forums and sites.

Some publishers have said their earnings are flat or up from the previous month but most are reporting a drop in earnings.

I figured I do my own poll and see what the Search Engine Roundtable readers are noticing:

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A Sphinn thread has discussion on if an SEO is worth $350 per hour. The Sphinn thread is an off branch of a blog post that portrays an SEO who seems to not be such a great SEO but is yet able to charge $350 per hour for a minimum of 2000 hours per year. Yes, that turns out to be $700,000 per year, before taxes.

In this case, it appears that the SEO consultant is getting away without providing that much value to his client. It is hard to tell for sure, because we only see a small snap shot of one specific meeting but it just seems that way from the blog post.

In any event, are any SEOs out there worth $350 per hour? I believe so. But at what point. I am not sure I know many SEOs who charge $350 per hour with a 2000 hour commitment. Normally, an SEO with such a huge commitment will come down on price - i.e. more hours, less per hour. An SEO can drive an incredible amount of relevant and converting traffic to a site. Yes, it can be worth much more than $700,000 per year for a client.

So how much are SEOs worth? Is it industry dependent? Is it skill dependent?

Here is a poll. How much would you pay a top top SEO, if you couldn't do it yourself?

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

A WebmasterWorld has several reports from non-US based site owners saying their rankings in the main USA based Google.com has dropped from the first page to page five or beyond. This is not just one report from people complaining, there are even those with US based sites who are delighted about the apparent change in how Google handles non-US based sites (i.e. not hosted in the US or containing a foreign TLD).

Here are some negative reports from the thread:

One week ago the site ranked again in top 10 for the USA visitors. It lasted for 3 days and then it dropped again to #60+ only in the USA. It still ranks in top 10 for the same terms in all other countries.

For example my site ranks #6 on google.com for the UK IP addresses and it ranks #56 on google.com for the USA IP addresses for the same search terms.

Here is a happy report from the thread:

All I can say is FINALLY! Our sector had been dominated by .co.uk and .au sites for ages - absolutely useless to US and Canada users, as none of the companies sell in these countries.

The changes I'm seeing are all .co.uk and .au sites (previously 6 out of 10 were of these extensions), are gone in google.com, but show in google.co.uk.

Can't make everyone happy, can you? These reports started trickling in about two days ago, on January 29th. About the same time I reported that Google began implementing the geotarget data from Google Webmaster Tools.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: January 30, 2008"

Yesterday, we heard again that Yahoo is laying off 1000 workers. Sadly, Yahoo's stock is also faltering.

Here's a 3 month snapshot:

Why is Yahoo having such a hard time? According to Roger Montti, it's because they are unable to attract teens and young adults. They also are taking in more money but are turning less profit.

Is Yahoo going to go down for good? No, forum members don't think so.

I think Yahoo has lots going for it with regards to content. It has the best email -- way better than Gmail or MSN Hotmail. The New version of the Yahoo mail (I pay for mine yearly and get the premium).

I was watching MSNBC the other night and they were talking about Y Answers and you keep hearing about their OMG site. I think its a great time to invest in Yahoo while their stock is down.

Y! is not going anywhere.

Google is Yahoo's biggest competition. And Yahoo needs to up their game, according to others:

The problem with Yahoo isn't that they soley need something new or some updates, its that they need to do something to actively shore up their % of users, right now google is pickpocketing them. Then they need to start actively competing with google, taking their users.

Additional coverage is at Techmeme and the Yahoo earnings report is on Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Kevin Heisler of Search Engine Watch and I crossed paths on Monday night at a NYC Advertising Meetup. (Unfortunately, we didn't actually see each other.)

But Kevin blogs about what they discussed, which includes bar codes on print ads (which can tie in traditional media with tracking for online advertising) and audio/TV advertising.

Here's an example barcode:

None of these technologies has taken off, but Kevin Heisler says that this is all part of the Google Ecosystem, and you can evolve or die out. We've seen Google TV market ads about 9 months ago and taught you how to set up print ads, but this is a whole new ballgame.

Additional coverage is at Techmeme.

Do you think it will work?

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

The Microsoft adCenter blog has announced that it has partnered with the Wall Street Journal for offering exclusive advertising content.

We're pleased to announce that on Tuesday, January 29, 2008, Microsoft and The Wall Street Journal Digital Network reached an agreement in which Microsoft will become the exclusive provider of contextual and paid search ads for The Wall Street Journal Digital Network (WSJDN), which includes WSJ.com, Barrons.com, Marketwatch.com, allthingsd.com along with other sites.

What this means: Microsoft will partner with the Wall Street Journal and any advertisers using Microsoft adCenter ContentAds will now get their ads on the highly-trafficked Wall Street Journal.

This is very promising, according to some.

I always like seeing "positive" Microsoft news. I'll have to say that MS have been "kicking it up a notch" over these past 90-120 days. TV advertising appears to be stepped up and earnings reports are good.

I'm rootin' for ya MS. We need some balance in our space and between you, Yahoo! and Ask.com, you're all we have left. :)

Looks good. Let's see how it plays out!

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

A new tool called Link Diagnosis has been released that allows you to examine your competition. The tool uses the Yahoo! API and according to Patrick Altoft who posted it to Sphinn, it's one of the "best link analysis tools I've seen."

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. There are a few bugs (this is brand new), but that's to be expected.

I have been running some tests on it and I really like the information it provides. I have experienced a few errors, which is to be expected, and I assume they will get straightened out. All in all I like what I see from it so far.

The findings can then be downloaded to CSV. Very cool.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Reports are coming from Google Groups and WebmasterWorld that Google AdSense will be issuing two Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) transmissions to canadian publishers, who use the EFT, this month.

AdSensePro Jordan explained that there was an "issue with January EFT payments to Canadian publishers." An email was sent to those publishers who were impacted by the issue, the email reads:

We're writing to let you know about an issue with your January AdSense payment. The full amount of your most recent Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payment was not transmitted all at one time. Therefore, it will be issued in two EFT transactions. Within the next few days, you'll receive the first payment, which is the bulk of the amount you're owed. You may have already received this payment. The remaining amount will be sent in a separate transaction later this week.

During this time, you may happen to see messaging that your account is on hold and you'll be prompted to select a new form of payment. Rest assured this is a normal part of the process and we kindly ask that you do not make any such changes until both these payments have been finalized.

Your Payment History page in your AdSense account will show the following over the next few days:

1) A 'Payment issued' line posted on January 25, 2008 calculated in USD. (If you click on the 'details' link next to this line you'll find this payment was calculated with an exchange rate of 0.981.)

2) An 'EFT not successful - earnings credited back' line has posted today, January 29, 2008. This doesn't mean that your EFT was unsuccessful; it's only displayed to balance the amounts within your AdSense account. Again, during this time, you may happen to see messaging that your account is on hold and you'll be prompted to select a new form of payment. Rest assured this is a normal part of the process and we kindly ask that you do not make any such changes until both these payments have been finalized.

3) Then, a 'Payment issued' line will also be posted, for the actual USD amount of the initial deposit that was sent to your account today, January 29, 2008. (If you click on the 'details' link for this payment you'll find this payment was calculated with an exchange rate of 1.030.)

4) Followed by an additional 'Payment issued' line which has posted today, January 29, 2008 when this additional payment is processed for the remaining amount that you are due. (If you click on the 'details' link for this payment you'll find this payment was calculated with an exchange rate of 1.030.) The sum of these two last 'Payment issued' lines will reflect the correct amount of your payment. So soon, your Payment History page will appear something like the following example:

Jan 25 Payment issued (US $100.00)
Jan 29 EFT not successful - earnings credited back US $100.00
Jan 29 Payment issued (US $96.00)
Jan 29 Payment issued (US $4.00)

Please be assured that the remainder of your payment will be deposited into your account soon.

Once again, we appreciate your patience as we work to fix the error.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team

There are all the details you need to know.

Forum discussion at Google Groups and WebmasterWorld.

When Yahoo Publisher Network publishers try going to the YPN Portal, they are now presented with a security prompt. If you look closely at that error, it says that their secure certificate has expired.

It expired a day ago. I guess Yahoo is trying to cut costs wherever they can, including security. Of course I am kidding. Often companies forget to renew their security certificates. I am sure it will be resolved shortly and I am sure the site is still secure, it just doesn't have the Equifax seal of approval.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Search Engine Watch Forums moderator, abbottsys, is on a roll. Today, he posted some early results on a test ad he was playing with. He took the headline from his best working ad, and placed the headline in the description lines. For example, let's say his headline was RustyWords, the ad would look like this in Google:

You see, he placed his best converting AdWords ad headline into the headline, description line 1 and description line 2. Then placed the ad live and began tracking all the metrics.

Guess what, so far, the early results match the results of his best running ad.

His early findings:

The bogus ad has matched the real ad in terms of clicks, CTR and conversions. In short, its performance is superb.

If he can replicate these results across multiple ad sets and over a longer period of time then AdWords professionals need to begin scratching their heads.

Of course, the headline text might be so good that repeating it screams to searchers. Testing this in a lower converting ad might reproduce the same results or not. It would be interesting to test this AdWords tactic out a bit more and see more results.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

A Search Engine Watch Forums moderator asked why are Google's 404 Not Found pages so cold and unhelpful?

For example, there is no page on the Google domain over here so Google returns a header status of 404, to tell us and spiders that the page requested is not found on that server. But from what we all know, 404 pages, although sad in nature, can be salvaged.

But creating custom 404 pages, you can help aid your user to find the page he or she was looking for. Google's 404 pages look like this:

Why not put some of the Google Products on the page with a big search box and some sponsored listings? It has to be more useful then what Google has now.

How are Google's 404 pages helping organize the content of the world? I wonder if there is a strategic reason behind why Google may use plain vanilla 404 pages. I can make up some reasons, but I am interested if we can possibly get a plausible explanation from a Googler on this?

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: January 29, 2008"

SphinnCon Israel has officially sold out today. In fact, we added 15 additional seats, increasing our capacity to 165 people from our original 150 people. I apologize to all those that did not get to come to the first ever SphinnCon and the first ever sudo-SMX event in Israel, but there is always next year! One thing is for sure, we know there is real interest and support for such an event in Israel - which makes me incredibly happy and proud.

Here is our revised speaker list:
SEO Panel

• Branko Rihtman, SEO Specialist at Tens Technology (Presenter)
• Ophir Cohen, CEO of Compucall
• Sam Michelson, CEO of Five Blocks
• Gilad Sasson, Search Marketing Analyst at Nekuda.co.il

• Avi Wilensky, CEO of Promedia Corp (Presenter)
• Itai Levitan, Managing Partner at EasyNet
• Alon Sheafer, Founder of Kenshoo
• Tal Cohen, Finance and Technology Industry Manager at Google Israel
• Michael G. Samet, Ph.D., CEO, Referral Technology, Inc.

• Eli Feldblum, CEO of RankAbove (Presenter)
• Tzvika Avnery, Partner at Tagadam
• Roi Carthy, TechCrunch
• Lior Hener, Yedda

I have to thank the sponsors who stepped up to be part of the first SphinnCon Israel. Sponsoring this event not only made it possible for us to financially pull this all together but also shows how giving the SEM community is worldwide. It is a true honor to have these local Israeli companies be such a big part of the SphinnCon Israel event. The sponsors include:

• Compucall
• K.co.il
• Play65
• eToro

Also, we have a free venue, free! The Department of Technological Management and Marketing at the Jerusalem College of Technology has given us a large large class room and lobby to host the event.

Thank you all for sponsoring!

Now for the mushy girly part. When the concept of such a social networking event was first drawn up, there were a few individuals in the Israeli SEM community who stood up and decided to help in so many ways. I wanted to specifically mention each of them by name. Each of these people helped organize this event for me and the SEM Israel community and they all deserve our deepest gratitude. I cannot express how much time, leg work, negotiating, diplomacy and all the stuff that goes into making an event like this work - went into this SphinnCon Israel. I personally thanked each one over here, with additional comments on Sponsors as well. But here is the list of individuals that deserve a mention, in alphabetical order:

• Michael Barnett
• Eli Feldblum
• Roi Hildesheimer
• Gilad Sasson
• Mayer Reich
• Branko Rihtman

Like I said earlier, I wrote a personal thank you to all these people and companies at my personal blog. But they deserve kudos here as well.

For $50 each person, I think the real winners will be the attendees. The presentations look outstanding. I personally prepared a 15 minute introduction, in Apple Keynote, so that should be cool. Now instead of me covering a search conference, I will try to help run one. Should be interesting.

Thank you all again!

Forum discussion continued at Sphinn.

SlightlyShadySEO wrote an interesting blog post about how you can look at things that no longer work in terms of SEO and use what you've learned to avoid making mistakes that will cause penalties. Here's what he's found from his own observations:

Here's one example about paid links. Beforehand, you could directly solicit for links, use link brokers, and pay for blog posts. SlightlyShadySEO says that there's still doubt about how Google filtered these sites and alludes the penalties to manual reports. If you want to avoid this filter, start doing everything privately from relevant sites.

Other tactics related to link spamming and link farms are also discussed with the was to circumvent the filter. This is a good read.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Last week, Jonathan Simon posted on Google Groups about the questions and answers he received while at Las Vegas Pubcon 2007. For reference, here are some of the questions and answers that were discussed.

Scrapers

If your content is being scraped, it is a nuisance, but usually you need not worry about it. If, however, you find they outrank you, send a spam report to Google or file a DMCA take down notice.

PPC vs. SEO

Google recommends that if you're already getting a lot of visibility with PPC, you should still make your site search-engine friendly. As Jonathan says, "don't just roll the dice, make it a sure bet."

SEO focus for Large Sites

If you have a huge site, focus on SEOing the entire site, not just some core pages.

Reputation Monitoring

To be informed of mentions of your company, subscribe to Google Alerts or to an RSS feed of Google's blogsearch for your particular search phrase.

Additional questions and answers are provided. The full read and discussion is at Google Groups.

Jeff Quipp over at Search Engine People has started a funny blog post about search spammers. His post, entitled "You might be a search spammer if...." has hit the front page of Sphinn and caused a lot of chuckles. Here are some of the items on the list:

1. You know what a Markov Chain is
2. you use an image editor to write your emails
3. you think of him as “Matt Cutts Me Out”

Surprisingly, there are a lot of people who can identify with these tactics! Do you?!

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Shoemoney blogged that Google AdSense might be running a paid reviews service in the near future. The email is unconfirmed and there's no comment from the Google AdSense team yet, but forum members are already suspecting that it's going to happen.

The question is: how? If the rumor is true, will Google require "nofollow" on all these links? (You'd think so.) How about redirected URLs? (Possibly.)

People still find it funny:

haha about time google will clearly state they're selling links.

I'm thinking this email has little credibility (just like Jeremy does), but it would be interesting to see if Google ends up monetizing on something that people want and need.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

The January 2008 Yahoo Search Update is reportedly now fizzling out. A WebmasterWorld thread says the results are beginning to look stable and the update seems to be settling out.

Typically with Yahoo updates, the results initially look out of place and some listings seem a bit awkward. Towards the end of the update, results stop moving around and results begin to set in their place.

WebmasterWorld's senior member, BillyS said:

As of yesterday things seemed to have settled down. It looks like we might be at steady state now.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Googler, JohnMu, wrote in a Google Groups thread that links from EDU domains are not in itself better links than .com or .net links. John said:

In general, I would like to add that no, backlinks from .EDU domains generally do not get "additional credibility from Google"

I believe this may be one of the first times we have official confirmation in writing from a Google representative that EDU links are not anymore valuable then other types of links.

Here are some of our past articles on EDU links:

• What Would You Do For An .edu Link?
• Finding Some of Your EDU Links with Yahoo Search
• How Do You Obtain Links from .edu Sites?
• Need Help Getting Links from Education (.EDU) Sites?
• Are Links From .edu and .gov Domains Really "Better?"

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

We now have official confirmation that the Google position 6 penalty is now being reversed.

Sebastian commented to let me know that Matt Cutts of Google has confirmed at Sphinn that whatever was causing quality sites to be moved down to the 6th position in the Google search results, is now being reversed. Matt said:

When Barry asked me about "position 6" in late December, I said that I didn't know of anything that would cause that. But about a week or so after that, my attention was brought to something that could exhibit that behavior. We're in the process of changing the behavior; I think the change is live at some datacenters already and will be live at most data centers in the next few weeks.

In general if you think a site might have a penalty (perhaps from past behavior) and you think the site is clean presently, you can do a reconsideration request in our webmaster console to ask Google to take another look at the site.

I just love it when the SEO community's communication helps Google notice these things and make changes based on our feedback. I should really go back and document each and every time Google has made changes based on SEO community feedback.

In any event, if you were impacted by this penalty - you don't have to do anything, as I thought. Just wait it out and Google should take care of the issue on their side.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

Continue reading "Daily Search Forum Recap: January 28, 2008"

Mobile web advertising is the next big thing, according to a Reuters report on a speech by Eric Schmidt.

Forrester suggests that mobile advertising will only be less than $1 billion by 2012. But Schmidt disagrees, citing that the mobile advertising platform will boom in the upcoming years. Indeed, speculation about mobile advertising is already ongoing and is likely to continue.

Forum members suspect that Schmidt is right. Mobile advertising is predicted to take off. Some, though, don't want mobile ads. (They're likely the same people who didn't want ads on websites at all about 10-15 years ago. Things change.)

And others are already seeing ads, such as AdSense, on their iPhone and other similar devices, and these sites are not optimized for mobile usage. So it's a matter of first getting your site optimized for mobile phones and then constructing your ads in such a way so that mobile phone users will not find it to be an issue.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

A HighRankings Forum thread discusses the possibility that Google themes sites. That is, Google groups sites together because of the relevancy of the link. So, for example, if you got 300 links to your blue widget site from a bunch of humor sites, wouldn't Google think that the blue widget site is actually about humor (and not so much about blue widgets)?

If you do a Google search for related:www.mysite.com and find similar sites, wouldn't that be theming?

As Randy says, "[I]t's more than just about the words on the page. You'd also need to factor a broader range of linking relationships between multiple sites into the equation."

Ian McAnerin mentions that the related: search operator doesn't really theme sites as we'd expect. It's based on the type of backlinks received.

However, in the end, people agree that some sort of theming exists:

I think Google does actually Theme sites. This may split a site as covering a number of related themes.

The discussion spans three pages (so far) and there appears to be no end in sight. What are your thoughts on Google's "theming?" Share your thoughts at HighRankings Forum.

Last week, DazzlinDonna wrote an open letter to Matt Cutts asking him why her PageRank has been impacted when she's already removed all wording to the effect of accepting paid links and submitted a reinclusion request. John Honeck writes about how the events unfolfed, which basically went something like this: Donna wrote the post, it got Sphunn, Matt saw and commented with some proposed changes, Donna responded and made the changes, and other people started chiming in. (On that note, Matt, look at my site. I submitted a request twice!)

John's proposed solution is something that already seems to exist (from my experience), but he lists it as follows:

1. Site owner fixes site and submits a reconsideration request.
2. Google reviews the site and finds some outstanding violations.
3. Google sends a message back in the site owners webmaster’s tools message center saying, “We have received and reviewed your request for consideration. Unfortunately at this time we are unable to act on your request due to continued possible violations of our Webmaster Guidelines. Please feel free to review the Webmaster’s Guidelines, make any changes that you find appropriate and resubmit your reconsideration request”
4. Site owner digs deeper and sends in request.
5. Google responds with another note, “We have received and reviewed your request for consideration. It appears that your site is now within our guidelines.”

The one concern is point #3 which, because there are no responses from the Google Webmaster Team (at least from my experience once again), there's no way to really determine if the request has been actually investigated. So John's solution would clear up the conception that the Google Webmaster Team isn't listening or looking.

John ends up saying that it's just a fair thing for everyone. I agree.

Having Matt Cutts be the voice of Google out there writing on his own blog, commenting on people’s sites, and occasionally penning something on the official webmaster’s blog is great and wonderful for the community that watches that sort of thing. I just believe that those people are a small subset of the actual webmaster population and the majority should not be at a disadvantage because they don’t subscribe to the right feeds.

(Though, John, Matt has not taken me seriously at least 3 times--at least!--and I know he reads this blog!)

What do you think? Is communication closed? Should the reinclusion procedure be a lot more communicative, at least to the point of the Google Webmaster Team acknowledging receipt of the messages and stating that they are unable to make changes at this time?

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn. (Oh and Matt, I'm looking at you.)

On WebmasterWorld, AnalyticsAdvisor has volunteered to spend some time helping webmasters answer questions regarding Google Analytics. Apparently, this guy knows what he's talking about and is deeply involved in the Analytics sphere:

AnalyticsAdvisor would post as time allowed - hopefully checking in with this forum at least once a day (Monday through Friday) to see if there are Google Analytics related questions on the table. [snip]

This colleague is deeply involved with Google Analytics, and is genuinely passionate about helping advertisers learn to use it more effectively. He is a long term user of Analytics himself - having used the product for more than 6 years, starting back in the day when it was known as Urchin. He knows Analytics inside and out, and he knows how to listen to advertisers.

The question is being well-received by forum members and you should look forward to asking your Google Analytics questions (and getting answers) on WebmasterWorld.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Sadly, it is not uncommon to hear of a site that has recently been hacked. Google frequently has to deal with sites that get hacked and code gets injected into the site. If that happens, Google sometimes has to delist the site from showing in their index, because it harms the quality of their search results.

This has happened with Jennifer Convertibles, where I documented each step on the process and what exactly happened. It was a great learning experience and I was happy to share it with everyone. But it has also happened to our friends, including Search Engine Journal, DigitalPoint Forums, Google, ShoeMoney, WebWorkShop and even Al Gore. Sometimes we even think that some hacks are fake are are keen link building hack ideas, but in that case, it was not.

So what does Google recommend? Googler, Berghausen, gave one user this advice:

• You're running Apache. Check all your .htaccess files for code that doesn't belong there. Get rid of it.
• Look for scripts [usually php] that you did not write. Get rid of those, if you can. Sometimes permissions get hacked in unfriendly ways, so you may need to contact your host for help. Make sure to look for hidden files and files whose names start with ., too.
• Call your webhost and have them check the directories above your site for sketchy files if you are on virtual hosting.
• If you are running a CMS, image gallery, forum, or any other open source CGI application on your site, make sure it's up to date. Hackers often take advantage of known security holes in open source software by attacking sites that have not kept their CMS up to date.
• You're also running cpanel. Have your host make sure it too is up- to-date. cPanel hacks can be nigh impossible to clean up with normal login permissions, so you will almost assuredly need your host's help to get rid of the injected scripts if this is the case.

I also have a post on How to restore your Google rankings after a hack.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

The other week, I accused Google of skimming their affiliates, well, I was only half wrong. Google simply was displaying broken referral reports that made it look like Google was taking money away from their referral users.

A Google Groups thread confirms the issue was a "display" issue with reporting and has now been fixed.

Official Google representative, AdSensePro Ashley, said:

In our recent 'follow-up' post on the changes to referrals promoting AdSense, Talia noted that we were aware that recent referrals conversions were not appearing in some publishers accounts. As mentioned in this post, this was a display error, and past conversions were not removed from your accounts.

Please note that these conversions are now displaying correctly in your accounts again.

So the numbers should look accurate now and Google is really not skimming you guys.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Google Webmaster Central launched the ability to set the "geographic target" of a particular site within Google Webmaster Tools back in late October of last year. We have been gleaning hints and tips on if it works and how well it works from the forum threads since.

A recent WebmasterWorld thread reports that it can take up to 6-8 weeks after setting your geographic target for Google to pick up on the change and implement it through to the country specific level.

Here is a quote from the individual who tested this out:

I've domain.com hosted in US for years. (PR6) No connection with UK apart from natural incoming anchor text containing "UK + kw." Domain.com is now ranking highly on "UK-only results" on G.co.uk. Until now, you either needed a .co.uk domain or UK hosting to be listed on "UK-only results". However, the recent country targeting in the Webmaster Tools was set to "UK" about 2 months ago but I didn't spot the SERPs change until now.

Conclusion A: You can now host anywhere with any domain and will appear in Google's "country-only" SERPs within 6-8 weeks.

But at the same time, he found that if you have a .com and a .fr or something else, it can hurt you not to use the select geotarget feature. Why? Because the .com can begin to automatically be set by Google to do well only in the country specific results and then the .fr will be overshadowed by the .com. The only way around that, in these cases, appears to be to set the .com for US and the .fr for France, as an example.

I am personally going to be testing this out with a couple clients soon, so I hope to be able to add my two cents within a few months.

Past articles on the Geographic feature:
- Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools
- Setting the Geographic Target in Google May Not Limit You to that Target Area
- How Long Does it Take for Google to use Geographic Target Data?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.